From 1993 to 2009 the German, Austrian and French police forces had a problem. There was a woman, moving around all of their countries, committing crimes such as burglaries, petty theft and murder.
Police at the time were dumbfounded. Not only were these murders happening, but they are occurring over vast distances and sometimes only weeks apart.
In 1993, a woman was murdered after being strangled in her own home. DNA analysis of a cup pointed to a woman that was unknown to the police and the case later went cold.
Eight years later, on a kitchen cupboard door, that same DNA was found after the murder of a 61-year-old man in Germany. Over 100km away, that same year, DNA was found on a cookie jar after a break-in.
Over the next 16 years, a slew of crimes were seemingly being committed by the same woman but over vast distances. A genetic test of the mitochondrial DNA pointed towards a woman of Eastern European descent.
The initial investigation was a real head-scratcher. The task of cracking the case seemed almost impossible. The accomplices were a diverse group, hailing from different ethnicities and backgrounds, and had spread their activities over a vast geographic area. To top it off, the only eyewitness accounts described the main suspect as being male.
As investigators delved deeper into the case, it became increasingly clear that there was something more sinister at play. The evidence suggested that contamination was involved, throwing a wrench into the investigation and forcing the team to pivot their approach.
The team worked tirelessly, following up on every lead and exploring every possible avenue of investigation. The evidence of the perpetrator’s actions was mounting, and investigators began to piece together either a complex web of criminal activity or just a procedural mishap.
The history of DNA forensics, also known as DNA fingerprinting, is a fascinating one that dates back over three decades of scientific breakthroughs. In 1984, British geneticist Sir Alec Jefferies stumbled upon a discovery that would revolutionise the field of criminal investigations forever.
While studying an X-ray image of a past DNA experiment, Jefferies noticed a set of repeating patterns in the DNA between individuals of the same family. This groundbreaking discovery opened up a world of possibilities for forensic science. Jefferies’ discovery was initially used to resolve issues regarding paternity but it soon found a way into police work and crime-solving.
The first time the technology was used was during the investigation and trial of British child murderer and serial rapist, Colin Pitchfork.
The DNA of Pitchfork was first found by police in a semen sample taken from the body of his first victim, 15-year-old Lynda Mann. Three years later, another 15-year-old girl, Dawn Ashworth failed to return home and was later discovered beaten, strangled and raped. DNA analysis of both semen samples indicated the attackers was one and the same.
Jefferies and his team joined the hunt for the killer as they searched through thousands of donated DNA samples. The pressure was on to solve the case as the killer continued to elude the authorities. The initial suspect, 17-year-old Richard Buckland, had the suspicions against him quashed, thus becoming the first person to be exonerated of a crime using DNA evidence.
The true culprit, Pitchfork, evaded capture for years until his careless boasting at a local bakery of exposing himself to almost 1,000 women led to his downfall. His twisted crimes against innocent women had finally caught up with him and he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum sentence of 30 years.
The case of the Phantom of Heilbronn baffled investigators for years. The media dubbed her the “killer queen” and the “woman without a face”, as the Phantom’s DNA has been discovered all across central Europe,
In a bizarre twist to the story, the faceless woman’s DNA matched the DNA of the burnt body of a middle-eastern asylum seeker who has gone missing in 2002. It was a shocking discovery that raised even more questions about the Phantom’s true identity.
Were the police dealing with a criminal mastermind who had been traipsing all across Europe committing all manner of crimes from petty theft to murder?
No, they weren’t.
What had actually happened was the facility where the cotton swab were made became contaminated by the women who worked in the packaging factories.
After 16 years and millions of Euros of police time and resources, the Phantom of Heilbronn was unmasked as an unnamed woman working in a medical supply centre.
Unfortunately, however, due to all the contaminated materials being shipped from this warehouse, all the obtained DNA samples were now useless. A number of crimes initially attributed to the Phantom have since become cold cases that, due to a medical facility’s poor aseptic environment, will probably never be solved.
Imagine a work where criminals roam free, their DNA evidence scattered carelessly throughout crime scenes like breadcrumbs, leading investigators on a wild goose chase for years. It sounds like the scene from a Netflix crime thriller documentary, but for the 16 years leading up to the creation of ISO 18385, it was an all-to-real problem that plagued crime agencies worldwide.
The question that naturally arises is how could this issue have gone unnoticed for so long. It is a mystery that still boggles the minds of many and one that could have had devastating consequences for the justice system. But fortunately, the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) in 2016 developed a standard for minimising the risk of human DNA contamination for materials used in forensic investigations.
Now investigators can rest easy knowing that they have a reliable tool at their disposal that will help them uncover the truth and bring criminals to justice.
So, the next time you’re watching a crime drama on TV and you see the detectives analysing DNA evidence with pinpoint accuracy, remember that it’s all thanks to the hard work and dedication of law enforcement agencies and regulatory services like the ISO who are working away from the bright stage lights to make our world a safer place.
sources.
Berlin, C.H./ (2009) Germany’s Phantom Serial Killer: A DNA blunder, Time. Time Inc. Available at: https://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1888126,00.html
‘DNA bungle’ haunts German police (2009) BBC News. BBC. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7966641.stm
Lipphardt, A., 2020. The invention of the Phantom of Heilbronn: A cultural anthropological approach to the NSU complex. Journal for European Ethnology and Cultural Analysis, 4(1), pp.49-69.
The mystery of the phantom of Heilbronn (2016) ISO. Available at: https://www.iso.org/news/2016/07/Ref2094.html
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